Today I’m going to talk about titles, because that’s what’s annoying me right this very second. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m working on a novella this month. I’ve posted an excerpt from it, and as of right now it’s labeled “Untitled P.O.S.” It is so called because I struggle with titles.

At this point in time, I shouldn’t be stressing over the title of this project. I should be fussing over actually writing the thing. While I am most certainly fussing over the writing, its lack of a name is nagging at me. If nothing else I’d like to have a working title; at least that way I could stop calling it “that piece of shit” because how is anyone supposed to differentiate it from the other untitled pieces of shit I’ve written?

This certainly isn’t the first time a title has been a significant distraction to me. Back when I was writing my failed NaNo project (notice that’s become an unofficial title) I called it Inferos. “Inferos” is a Latin word and, according to the ABSOLUTELY INFALLIBLE Google translator, it means “hell.” Before settling on that, I was scrawling title ideas on everything; napkins, sticky notes, other people’s foreheads, wherever. It drove me nuts to open a file named “something_something_Idunno_draft1.” When “inferos” popped up, I thought it fit. Heaven, hell, and lots of other religious themes were present (by “present” I mean “sledge-hammered in the reader’s face”) in the story, so the language and the meaning of the word seemed logical. I also liked the look and sound of the word, as I do many Latin words.

After “winning” NaNo, I had the fantastic opportunity in the form of a free consultation with The Book Doctors (Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry). I had already purchased and read a good portion of their book (I seriously can’t tell you how insanely helpful this is to an unpublished writer hoping to get published), so when it came time for my consultation I thought I had a pretty good handle on the situation. After we talked about my pitch, David kindly told me what I needed to hear: The title was bad. It wouldn’t tell the prospective buyer or reader anything unless they knew Latin, which practically nobody does. Even if they did, it was vague to say the least.

If you think that’s the end of Carly’s adventures in dead languages, think again. When I wrote the short story that spawned my current project, I called it Veritas without a moment’s hesitation. The idea of truth is a strong element, the main family motto is in Latin, and it was 5 a.m. so I didn’t even give a rat’s ass. However, I knew the title wasn’t there to stay. Once I started planning the novella, I mentally unnamed it.

And that brings us to now. I still don’t have a name for it.

Obviously I’m not going to die if I don’t think of a title right now immediately ten minutes ago. If I had really had my priorities straight I would let it go untitled until such time as I actually needed a title or one appeared from the story itself, but nothing I’ve written on this blog suggests I’ve got my priorities straight and I’m certainly not going to start now.

At this point, I’d like to ask something a little more specific than “Hey hey hey, whaddaya guys think about titles?” because we all know titles are important and blah blah, great stuff, Carly. I would like to ask my readers about the title of my book. Something like, “If you saw these three titles on the shelf, which would you choose and why?” I would also like to do a book giveaway.

Hint, hint.

The only problem is, I don’t know how to connect those two yet. Thankfully, I have a team of experts working on it (or something), so with any luck I’ll have some kind of a naming contest/giveaway going on in short order.

In the meantime, do feel free to share your thoughts on titles, fonts, colors, page numbers, dead languages, et all ad nauseam. See what I did there?